Business incubators help fledgling innovative companies get established by providing shared facilities and services they find hard to afford on their own. When companies grow big enough to move out, new ones move in. If successful, incubators result in faster company formation and development.

Established companies, like Janssen Labs, aim to get a payoff as well. By getting close to creative startups, they could make contacts that pay off in the future.

It’s too soon to know whether Janssen Labs will meet this goal. But since its incubator opened a little more than a year ago, signs have been encouraging.

With the assistance of Prescience International, a San Francisco company that manages life-science incubators, Janssen Labs has brought in 18 tenants, with Telmedx being the most recent. And tenants asked about their experience speak highly of the incubator.

While Janssen Research & Development hunts for ideas and partnerships, the eager startups search for validation that their ideas are worthwhile.

Just being selected as a tenant is an important endorsement, said Telmedx Chief Executive Richard Anglin.

“Janssen Labs is the pharma division of Johnson & Johnson, and Johnson & Johnson is one of the leading health care companies in the world,” Anglin said. “It’s a real coup for us to be associated with them.”

Leasing space at La Jolla-based Janssen Labs also puts Telmedx in close contact with fellow tenant life-science professionals, Anglin said. Telmedx has developed software that lets doctors talk and see patients over their smartphones or computers, and delivers high-resolution photos to assist in diagnosis.

Telmedx’s move into the 32,000-square-foot life-science incubator, announced in mid-February, brought to 18 the number of tenant companies. The incubator opened a little more than a year ago. Leases typically go for about $1,000 to $3,000 a month for a three-month minimum; Anglin said Telmedx’s rent is in the lower range.

Janssen Labs is opening up even lower-cost space in a new section called a “Concept Lab,” designed to appeal to individual researchers. They can rent desk space with access to a shared laboratory to get proof of concept for an idea, said Diego Miralles, head of the incubator.

Janssen Labs benefits from the connections it develops, Miralles said. Companies are not required to partner with Janssen Labs, and they retain control of their intellectual property. But friendly conversations occur constantly.

“We have an entrepreneurial community within us,” Miralles said. “That is a great source of inspiration.”

Big pharmaceutical companies have worked for years to build relationships with smaller life-science and biotech companies, for purely practical reasons. Biotech companies are more productive in finding the potential new blockbuster drugs than big pharma has been. And what better way to get close to these companies than to have them working in your buildings?

Tenants can devote more time to their work, because the amenities they need are provided as part of the lease, Miralles said. These include basic services such as wireless Internet, along with conference rooms, “wet lab” space and shared use of instruments too expensive or impractical for startups to buy.

For startups with few employees, attempting to procure these services and instruments on their own would take time away from their mission, Miralles said.

One such instrument, a fluorescent microscope made by General Electric, was installed in mid-February. The microscope provides extremely precise cellular imaging, focusing down to tenths of a nanometer. The images can then be assembled in a computer to provide a complete 3-D image of a cell.

Tenant Amplyx Pharmaceuticals — and its investors — appreciate the convenience of having needed infrastructure on hand, said Robert Webb, vice president of medicinal chemistry.

“We were in a small lab in Sorrento Valley and needed to expand, and we began to search for space,” Webb said. “Oftentimes that involves going to a warehouse-type building or a concrete shell. We looked at a number of places where we would have actually had to put a lot into the infrastructure to make it a working lab. Investors typically don’t like that approach.

“In addition, we have a great deal of grant money, and grant money is really not slated for that sort of infrastructure improvement. They want to move the research forward.”

A condition of the grant was that Amplyx would set up in a location with expertise in chemistry, Webb said. Janssen Labs provided that expertise.

Moreover, the incubator provides “mundane” services that Amplyx would rather not deal with, Webb said.

“It starts even as simply as having a coffee machine down the hall, or being able to have dry ice delivered so you don’t have to do it yourself,” Webb said.

Incubator spaces are especially attractive to the individual entrepreneur who doesn’t have access to a lab, Webb said.

“You can do research in your own garage,” he said. “I think the local authorities would frown on that. But to really accelerate the pace of your research, that can be facilitated by a well-stocked and well-appointed incubator space.”